Blog Stats

MLB is the new NFL!

One of the selling points of the NFL that gets talked up by everyone who advocates for its awesomeness is that it is a league of extreme parity. Each training camp is a site of new hope because you never really know how well a team is going to do, then suddenly the Browns are 2-2 and the Chargers are 1-3 and it’s a whole new season.

A lot goes into achieving competitive balance in the NFL and the reasons usually cited are the same reasons usually cited for why there will never be competitive balance in baseball. But wait!

As of Sunday morning there had only been one season in modern baseball history when no club finished above a .600 winning percentage and no club finished below .400. That was in 2000, when the Giants finished at .599 and the Cubs and Phillies finished at .401.

As of Sunday evening there have now been two such seasons, with the Indians and Red Sox finishing at .593 and the Devil Rays at .407. Notice that the gap between the best and worse records shrunk .12 points between 2000 and 2007, indicating…well, probably not much. But for the moment at least it is the Major Leagues where the sophisticated sportsmen will find his parity and not, as it has been said by cruder men, in the NFL.

Perhaps MLB needs to adopt the slogan, “Any given Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with an off day on Monday followed by another four game series on Tuesday!”